Legend

The Maine Coon is one of the oldest natural breeds in North America, so much so that it is generally considered to be a native of the state of Maine, of which it is the official cat.
Its name derives from Maine, the state of New England in which it was sighted, and from Raccoon, English teddy bear, because of its tail very similar to that of a raccoon.
There are many legends surrounding the origin of this particular cat.
The most common at the beginning of the century narrated that for the large and hairy ears with tufts and the large and ringed tail, the Maine Coon was the result of a cross between a lynx and a washing bear. The hypothesis, obviously absurd, has nevertheless contributed to feed the numerous stories handed down on this breed.
There are also those who at all costs wanted to give this "rustic" cat a royal aura, even making it descend from six Angora cats that Queen Marie Antoinette, during the French Revolution, would have saved by sending them to Wiscasset , in the US state of Maine.
The origins of the Maine Coon have created so many legends and conjectures, none of which can be proven.
The most probable theory, although the least picturesque, would indicate the Maine Coon as the result of a cross between short-haired cats and overseas long-haired cats. According to some, in fact, the Maine Coon had ancestors among the Nordic cats, the progenitors of the Norwegian Forest Cat, who arrived in North America in the year 1000 following the landings of the Vikings on the Newfoundland Islands; in fact the wild cat (Felis silvestris) is not present in North America.
According to others, however, the origin of the Maine Coon dates back to the period of colonization, when the ships of the colonists from all over the world docked on the American coasts of the Northeast, leading to the continuation of the cats to massacre mice.